


Schmoop Bingo

by tainry



Series: Borealis [2]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, PNP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5846029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little bits of fluff for the Schmoop Bingo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Krebs Cycle Lullaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perceptor sings to Dani.

“Here,” Mikaela said, handing up a bottle. “You deal with the output enough, it’s only fair you get to handle the input.”

The last thing she had expected any of the robots to do was change diapers, but Perceptor could get the messiest fallout contained and disposed of in ten seconds or less, without pinching, no matter how squirmy Dani was being. It helped that his hands were bigger than Dani was and had a lot of fingers.

Perceptor accepted the bottle with two of those fingers, deploying small-scale graspers from their tips. He cradled Dani with his other hand, positioning her in what he had found to be the optimal angle to satisfy the baby’s own mysterious desires and also avoid the inevitable aerophagia engendered by the ability to swallow and breathe concurrently. Channeling just the right amount of warmth from his spark to his hands, he watched avidly as the baby suckled. 

Mikaela smiled and left them to it, returning to the latest modifications to her medical servos. She knew Perceptor was observing the process in molecular detail – everything from the simple but effective vacuum formation in the mouth, the modified swallowing mechanism that Dani would lose as she grew older, the peristaltic action of the esophagus, the various stages of digestion in stomach and small intestine with the chemical additions from liver and gallbladder and pancreas, to the transport of nutrients in the blood and uptake by individual cells, and waste formation, compaction and elimination by kidneys and large intestine. He found it fascinating. Mikaela felt he was welcome to it.

“Oooh,” Perceptor cooed, having caught on to Motherspeak as quickly as the Cybertronians had to every other human language. “Look at your lactase enzymes go!” As Dani drank she watched his optics and the whirling sensor fins and vanes on his head, as fascinated by him as he was by her. “O, first acetyl-CoA gives an acetyl group to oxaloacetate,” he sang, beginning the Krebs Cycle Lullaby that drove even Wheeljack to abandon the vicinity. Mikaela hoped Dani never decided to not fall asleep without it, because she was damned if she’d ever get the hang of the thing. It wasn’t just the polysyllabic Latinate vocabulary; it was the _tune_. Or what to human ears seemed to be a lack thereof. It was, as Ratchet had gently explained, an old Cybertronian drinking song. 

Bottle finished, Perceptor set it aside and brought Dani to a more upright position to facilitate excess gas dispersion via eructation, patting her back with a flattened fingertip at the level of the third lumbar vertebra. 

“Succinate, Fumarate, Malate,” he sang, “with water and Fumarase, dear Malate dehydrogenase / Back we go, fast not slow, to Oxaloacetate…” A hearty burp from Dani punctuated the end of the lullaby. Seeing that the little stomach was no longer burdened by uncomfortable bubbles, and having escaped the semi-inevitable regurgitation on this occasion, Perceptor tucked Dani against his chest armor so she could hear his spark spinning.


	2. Bubble Bath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz introduces Tracks to the joys of carwashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Schmoop Bingo fill.

“Come on, Tracks,” said Jazz. “Just try it, it’s fun!”

“Everyone knows these things strip your finish right off,” Tracks said. “No thanks.” Tracks sniffed, or did a pretty good impression of sniffing, for someone who did not, strictly speaking, have a nose.

Jazz laughed. “It’d take a mid-size nuclear strike to damage your finish and you know it. C’mon. Think of all those buffers and rollers and spinning chamois strips…pounding on your chassis… Feels pretty nice, I gotta say.”

“Oh very well. If you insist.”

“Put it that way, guess I do,” Jazz laughed. “I’ll even go first, how’s that?”

“Peachy.”

 _Mmmmmm,_ Jazz sent as water, then soap sprayed over his sleek silver vehicle form. Spinning rolls of fringed fabric lowered from the ceiling and closed in from the sides, giving Jazz a reasonably decent scrubbing, hard enough to rock him on his suspension. Water again and air jets angled from the ceiling even mostly dried him off so he wouldn’t be streaked. Mostly. Tracks determined to keep his shielding at maximum. 

As Jazz vacated the space and remotely keyed in the code so the dumb, human-built machine would begin again, Tracks rolled gingerly onto the indicated triggering plates. 

After a second or two of weak dripping the water pressure built up to a good downpour, enough to clear a thick layer of dust off if Tracks had been the sort of mech to let himself get dusty. He dropped his shields entirely, enjoying the sensation and the sound of the water beating on his panels and the not-glass of his windows. 

The detergent suds came down next, and Tracks shut off his optical net, letting the silky, slithery feel of the bubbles running down his surfaces deluge his whole attention. His armor wasn’t as sensitive as Hound said human skin was, but it did feel good, the vibrations transmitting throughout his frame. His engine revved with pleasure. 

As the rollers came down and around him, his engine revved higher, his core temperature rising. Oh Primus, yeah, like a good, hard massage, rocking him on his wheels. He extended his wings slightly, and their more sensitive control surfaces sent waves of feeling directly into his CPU. Why hadn’t he tried this months ago? The rollers lifted away. Water again, and then the blowers. Tracks hummed to himself, rising up on his tires as the spray sluiced the bubbles away. He almost laughed at the feel of the air jets – like travelling at fifty miles an hour but standing still, and the wind got into pleasing little nooks and crannies the water hadn’t. 

Engine agreeably warm, he waited for the cycle to finish and the machine to indicate he could go. The light was still red, though, and the low barrier keeping his front tires in place hadn’t flipped down.

 _I gotcha set up for the special wax finish,_ Jazz said. 

_Oh. Thank y— JAZZ!_

It wasn’t wax the sprayers were dousing him with. In seconds the entire carwash chamber was filled with a dense foam. A simple soapy solution, Tracks’ analyzers told him; nothing inimical. But he’d been pranked! 

With only a slight shift in his alt mode optical net, he could see perfectly well through the mass of bubbles. He would look ridiculous emerging from the carwash like this and he knew Jazz would have a recording feed going live out to every computer and mech on the planet. He could wait until the bubbles subsided. Except now there was a human driving up behind him, wanting to use the carwash too. It wasn’t Sam or Maggie or anyone else from the embassy either, so they weren’t part of the set-up. Tracks couldn’t bear to be so rude as to make them wait when he was technically finished. Slag Jazz. 

Oh great. Jazz had transformed into robot mode and was coming in. Probably, Tracks thought, to drag him bodily out into the sunshine so everyone could see him all be-bubbled and laugh at him.

But Jazz didn’t grab him. Tracks jumped a little as Jazz walked up to his front bumper and crouched, extending both hands and magnetic fields under the bumper to… Not grab, but stroke. Gently. Tracks’ engine revved up to the same state it’d been in before he’d realized about the bubbles. Jazz’s fields played delicately through Tracks’ entire undercarriage, and Tracks shivered, holding fast to his alt mode.

 _What…are you doing?_ Tracks hissed via tight-beam.

_Thought that was kinda obvious, mech._

_The humans…!_

_Can’t see us. Unless somebody got an infrared camera back there. And daylight washes that right out on the wavelengths they use._ His fingers reached up into parts of Tracks that did not correspond to any human-built vehicle. 

_Jazz, if you wanted to interface you might have said so._

Jazz chuckled. _Mmhmm. The prank was planned. This?_ \- he sent a particularly strong magnetic pulse through Tracks’ center of mass, near his spark chamber - _This is because watching you get sudsed up and rubbed down in here got me hot n’ bothered._

 _Oh._ Tracks transformed. They needed to hurry, and the humans nearby meant sharing sparks was out of the question. Within a cable link, a few seconds could feel like hours, or a decade or however long they wanted. Jazz’s hands slid over Tracks’ body as he completed the transformation and stood on two legs, drawing Jazz up with him and pulling him close. 

Cables snaked between them as Tracks stole a kiss and Jazz initiated the link, hands roving in hot, quick movements. Within, time slowed as their somatic and CPU nets merged, bodies one, outer minds one, and they could feel the edges of every bubble around them, sleek and sliding on their armor, getting between, into the intricate structures of their protoforms, slippery, rainbow-hued, light as air, bright with sunlight. 

Building charge would be difficult in this environment, but Tracks routed power in sweet and subtle ways, knowing things as Towers mechs did, guiding Jazz lamina by lamina, down through the layers of consciousness, down to the deepest firewalls, where their conjoined admiration spread like the outer mass of a sun gone nova. 

They caught each other as their knees gave way, sinking to the carwash floor entwined, the crests of their helms pressing together. Jazz stroked Tracks’ exquisitely forged face with a fingertip.

“We’re losing our camouflage,” Tracks murmured. The bubbles were settling, would reveal their antennae if they stood in root mode. 

“Three seconds,” Jazz said, and kissed him. At the end of the requested time, they transformed and exited. Jazz pulled around to the entrance, rezzing a holo-driver who waved at the human staring at the wall of bubbles inside. “Soap dispenser malfunctioned,” Jazz called out. “Think it’ll be fine in a minute or two.”

With a squeal of tires, chassis clean and shining, side panels brushing, Jazz and Tracks pulled side-by-side out onto the street, heading north toward the embassy.


	3. First Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ironhide gets the first dance at Annabelle's wedding.

Most of her friends had arrived for their weddings in rented limos. Annabelle Lennox had come in a gleaming black pickup truck, with a blue and red semi, a painfully green Hummer, a sleek little supercar and an aggressively yellow Camaro as entourage.

It was a matter of course that General William Lennox, her father, walked her down the aisle, but there had been a bit of a kerfuffle over who got the first dance. The venue for the reception was outdoors, since half of Anna’s side of the guest list was composed of people who ranged in height from nine feet to over ninety.

Ironhide had at last won in the dance order, but only after an intervention by Sarah.

The groom, Nick, (whose best friend – and now best man – was named Brent but had, for reasons which remained deliberately obscure, come to be called “Dent”; hence the two were known as “Nick and Dent”. Anna had grown fond of them both almost immediately) watched with understandable trepidation when Jazz cued up the music.

Armor polished to a reflective shine, Ironhide stepped onto the large circle of textured concrete designated as the dance floor. (The more traditional parquet being out of the question.) He extended a hand – sans cannon – to Anna and, grinning ear to ear, she took it. 

“Are you sure this is…?” the father of the groom whispered to General Lennox. He caught himself before actually saying “safe”. The robots were, essentially, alien ambassadors. And very tall. 

Lennox let this slide without responding with the scathing wisecrack that had sprung to mind. Rising into the higher echelons had required learning a certain degree of tact. Having Optimus Prime to hand as an example didn’t hurt. He simply crossed his arms and watched, smiling, as Ironhide lifted Anna into his arms, holding her against his massive chest so gently the billows of her skirt wouldn’t even be wrinkled. 

There were giggles from both humans and mechs as Ironhide stepped with overt care into the waltz; partly because of the use of _The Blue Danube_ in Stanley Kubrick’ s _2001: A Space Odyssey_ , and partly for the incongruent image of Ironhide dancing at all, let alone with a gauzy-gowned bride. Ironhide maintained a coolly dignified, serene demeanor. He’d promised Anna no pyrotechnics during the wedding or reception. 

Anna looked up at her family guardian, smiling into those blue, blue optics. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought. She was now married to a man who’d passed not only her own rigorous standards but had gone unscathed (mostly) through the gauntlet of wooing a person under the particular protection of a giant alien robot. And she was dancing a waltz with said robot; an immense, comforting presence she’d grown up with. She had jumped into lakes and pools from his shoulders, dripped jelly on his seats, stuffed crackers into the slot in his dashboard that looked and acted like a CD player but wasn’t. He had told her mangled versions of fairy tales, been tough on her in the matter of homework, helped her choose Christmas presents for Optimus Prime and her human family. 

The war seemed far away in these few moments, before the music shifted and Ironhide set her down so she could dance with her groom, her father, Nick’s father, and dozens of others. She knew Ironhide would be there for the rest of her life, as short a span as that might seem to him. And when she was gone, he would look after her descendants, and he would remember her, remember this dance, for millions of years to come.


	4. Holding Your Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miles helps out in testing some new nano-scale medical robots.

Only rich guys had private planes, Miles thought, looking down through the canopy at ocean that really was turquoise blue and an island that really was emerald green with tropical vegetation. Rich guys or their buddies, who were also rich, who flew their own. 

Except Beachcomber owned nothing but himself; he even donated his mineralogical samples, when he was done studying them, to small museums that wouldn’t normally rate such unique and valuable specimens. And Skyfire _was_ the plane. The hop from Nevada to Hawaii had taken an hour and a half, and that only because Skyfire had to restrict himself to accelerative rates that wouldn’t squish Miles. 

Shorts and a tee were the order of the day for origin and destination. Miles hadn’t had to pack anything. They’d be home by midnight, if the test went well. 

Skyfire hovered over the beach and lowered his boarding ramp so Beachcomber and Miles could jump down, then few out some distance and transformed, setting his feet carefully on the least-inhabited and most solid ridge of volcanic rock he could find. The gentle waves only reached his shoulders. 

“The respirocytes have distributed throughout your bloodstream,” Beachcomber said, scanning Miles and giving him a small, reassuring smile. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Miles nodded. “Yeah. No problem.” All he had to do was walk out a few feet towards Skyfire, duck under the water and…hold his breath. The nano-scale devices now paddling about with his red blood cells would keep him oxygenated for about an hour of moderate activity, if Perceptor’s design worked properly. Perceptor was a savant among a species of highly advanced technical geniuses. It would work. Beachcomber wouldn’t let him drown anyway. 

The sand was warm, the wind was pleasantly cool. The water, as Miles slowly stepped into the waves, was also warm. Beachcomber had thought the test might go better if Miles was comfortable and not fighting hypothermia in addition, up in the chilly grey seas off the Oregon coast. 

Skipping ahead, Beachcomber turned around, walking backwards just in front of Miles, ready to catch him or hold his hands or leap him to the surface if something went hinky. The geologist didn’t even need to watch where he was going; feeling the slope of the sand, and the underlying rock, with sensors in his feet. He could probably trace every tiny burrow of every mollusk and crustacean in the sand. When the water level reached Miles’ chest they stopped. 

He watched Beachcomber’s visor shimmer from silver-white to cobalt to warm pewter and back again – scanning him again – took a deep breath because he couldn’t help it and dropped into the world underwater. 

Beachcomber sat crosslegged in the sand, holding on to Miles’ hips to keep the air in his lungs from bobbing him to the surface, grinning as curious little silver fish flicked around them, unable to breach his shields and taste his metal but warily avoiding getting too close to the human. Miles could hear the waves shushing on the beach, his own heartbeat, and the constant background clicking of fish and arthropods going about their fishy and arthropody business among the rocks and reefs that surrounded the island. The salt stung his eyes a little but it wasn’t bad once he got used to it. His clothes and hair billowed around him, brushing his skin gently. Beachcomber’s hands were firm and hard but not painful on his hips. 

He wondered how long he’d been down already. He’d gotten out of the habit of wearing watches soon after joining the science robots in their Oregon base. Maybe for the test it was better to let Beachcomber and Skyfire time things.

So far he could feel the pressure of his held breath in his nose and throat and sinuses, but no compulsion to stand and gasp at the air above. His sinuses were starting to fill with mucus, but that was pretty minor. Stretching out his legs up and behind him, Beachcomber letting him go, Miles swam a slow circle around the robot, who lay back in the rippled sand to watch him. Casual nonchalance personified, though his visor still glimmered actively. 

How far out was Skyfire standing? The sheer size of the Autobot scientist made judging scale weird. Miles let the air he’d been holding in his cheeks and mouth out in a stream of bubbles, ignoring the shaking of Beachcomber’s shoulders that indicated laughter, though of course no bubbles rose from the robot’s lips. Diving down a little, though not enough to have to clear his ears, Miles struck out seaward. He’d have to lift his head to sight Skyfire, so he just hoped he was heading in the right direction. All the rocks looked the same, out past the equally featureless sand. 

He kept swimming, sure now he was long past any point when he would have been able to hold his breath unaugmented. No burning in his lungs, no urgency to open his mouth and gulp for air. He kept his mouth closed in any case, as the water was very salty. 

After so long that Miles almost had forgotten what he was aiming for, distracted by the varied and plentiful fish and even a sea turtle cruising around less than five yards away, a big silver hand appeared out of the turquoise distance, pointing to Miles’ right. Miles turned, grinning. He’d been off course. Soon, the complexly overlapping plates of the deep-seeker’s armored chest came into view. Turning parallel, Miles swam a wide circle around Skyfire, avoiding the sharp edged wing-shards, swept along part of the way by a mild current. As he came around to Skyfire’s front, he saw Beachcomber climbing up Skyfire’s body, visor bright against a blue face made darker by the filtering water. 

Just as Miles realized he was getting a little dizzy, Beachcomber held out a hand toward him. Miles swam for it and let Beachcomber pull him in and up to the surface, Skyfire’s hand coming up to cradle them both, sheltering them from the more exuberant waves that far offshore. 

“One hour, three minutes and seven seconds!” Beachcomber said.

“Cool,” said Miles. “Can I go again?”


	5. Silver Guitared Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz plays the silver guitar Oratorio made, with interesting results. ;D

It had taken Oratorio nearly ten years to build his silver guitar. He spun wire from rough ingots between his fingers for the thirteen strings; melded silver with thin plates of steel to make it strong; carved the shapes of each component with tools he had had Ratchet install in his hands; etched complex designs onto every surface with a laser-enabled fingertip. The whorled, fractal designs owed their roots and meanings and contexts as much to Earth’s cultures and biosphere as to Cybertron’s. 

Jazz slung the steel mesh strap over his shoulders reverently, running his fingers over the neck like a lover. He had downloaded the proprioceptive files from Rio so he could play; though because their CPU structures were somewhat different, Jazz would never possess the same kind of virtuoso passion for it that Rio had. That was okay. He plucked each string one by one, letting each note add to the others in a long, sliding chord. Jazz could play, but Rio could make the guitar itself sing or wail or moan, or even speak with the harmonics and cadences of Cybertronian.

Accustomed to spur of the moment concerts like this, the embassy staff and resident robots either gathered to watch and listen, or went on with their duties knowing Teletraan would make the performance available via recording when they had the leisure to access it. Optimus emerged from the war room to observe from across the hangar; just what Jazz had counted on. Prowl hadn’t screamed his voice to ruin for fifteen years – Jazz stood the best chance of getting him to sing if it was to Prime. 

Because of its size, the tone of the silver guitar was much deeper than a human-scale one, closer to that of a cello, but played like a guitar, though neither Jazz nor Rio needed pick or slider. The sound rolled out to fill the cavern like a warm, fragrant mist, winding down the stem corridor, echoing in the smaller chambers. Jazz sent little skirls and flights of notes to tempt Prowl out of the Security office. It was an old melody, an ancient love song from Cybertron, where there had been billions of such ballads to express the myriad kinds of love Cybertronians felt for one another. This one, Jazz thought, suited beautifully the exact species of devotion Prowl felt for Prime, a devotion better than high-grade, felt through a deep link or directly spark to spark. 

Jazz purred the first glyph-sphere low, keeping one optic on the stem corridor and the rest of the area of his visor on Prime, who nodded and smiled at him from across the hangar. At the second glyph-sphere, Red Alert tight-beamed Jazz that Prowl was humming the melody, but showed no sign of moving from the office. Jazz smiled. Prowl’s vocoder had the power to be heard over the horrific din of a battlefield. Even if he chose to remain where he was, he would still be heard from Wheeljack’s tower to the mesa top. 

The gathered humans had not dispersed as they usually did when it became evident Cybertronian music was on the playlist. Much of such music was atonal or dissonant and filled with electronic screeches and wailing in the narrow range of human hearing. This particular song, though, flowed along gently within their range; melodic and pleasing even for those who couldn’t perceive the rich tapestry of subharmonics. 

The next formation of glyphs was a rising, thrumming wing of exultation and Jazz grinned wider as he sang. There it was, Prowl’s terrifyingly beautiful voice, unable to resist the lure. Three more spheres and, oh Primus, Prowl’s voice was killing him. It felt like dying, hailing one’s spark from one’s body. Prime moved toward the stem corridor, though he could hear Prowl just fine where he was. Jazz lowered his own voice, concentrating on the guitar, the zing and hum under his fingers, the body of the instrument held close against his armor. 

Voice and music wove about each other like spirits dancing. Some of the humans had tears in their eyes. The Cybertronians stood motionless, watching Prime or with optics offline. Optimus leaned hard on the stem corridor doorway, his other hand pressed hard to his chest. Jazz curled over the guitar, wringing greater passion from the sound, testing the limits of his programming. Oh, he shouldn’t push Prowl like this. There came Mirage, staggering into the hangar; Sideswipe caught him before he fell. Jazz’s fingers stroked and plucked the strings tenderly and Prowl’s voice rang through the stone halls of the embassy, full of joy and adoration, rising into the last flight of notes, subharmonics setting every spark spinning faster. 

The song ended on a complex chord, not held but frequency-shifted into an auditory helix, rising and falling at once in a kind of sated contentment. Harmonics and subharmonics faded as Jazz lifted his head and placed his hands flat on the body of the guitar to let the last vibrations course up his arms. 

Optimus, not caring for once what the humans would think, strode purposefully into the Security office.

 _Prime?_ Prowl’s chevron flicked forward, door-wings lifted high in greeting.

 **If you’re going to sing at me like that,** Prime rumbled, **you’d best be prepared for the consequences.** Prowl rather conspicuously made no protest as Prime drew him into an unoccupied chamber and locked the door. 

Jazz carefully placed the guitar on its stand before it caused any further mischief, then retracted his toes and skated out through the hangar into the desert, whistling and smiling like a dolphin.


End file.
